South Coast Trawler

Saturday, December 1, 2018

So now you've had a sleep and a yawn
and coffee and you are ready to actually think, so think about buying
a good camera.

First let's talk about why you should
buy a used camera.

Well, first they are cheaper. Camera
equipment has a terrifically short product cycle. Major producers
like Nikon, Sony, Pentax and Canon bring out new models before the
old model's packing has been completely sealed. Canon produced seven
models between 2006 and 2012 and all of them are now obsolete.

Which is very good news for you. Cause
obsolete gear has a low resale value. But that doesn't make it bad or
useless or even unreliable. In fact with modern electronics, they
either work or they don't. So a camera two years old may be four or
five hundred less than a new one and just as reliable and capable.
Remember manufacturers build for extreme conditions. They don't
expect every user to subject their equipment to extreme use but they
have to build for it because some user will. And you get the
advantage of all that superior construction.

Camera life spans are measured by
shutter activations. A moderately priced camera should be good for at
least fifty thousand activations: a superior build might do more than
a hundred thousand. But no matter what unless you are a working
professional, you'll never reach even the fifty thousand mark. That's
1700 pictures a year for thirty years for those who have to have
specifics.

So a camera two or three years old will
be just as reliable as a new camera, if you buy from a reliable
source. Now I know the merchants want you to shop small and buy local
and with Craigslist just a click away on every phone the temptation
to buy from a local is pretty strong...until you think about the
guarantee.

Craigslist may be local but if you buy
a turkey it is yours. Besides most Craigslist sellers have a very
dear idea of what their items are worth. Now I don't want to cheat
anyone out of a dime they deserve but I don't want to make their
Mercedes payment either.

A Canon 7D on Craigslist sells for $750
but from Adorama it is $170 body only, B&H has one for $399.95
with a two year no questions guarantee and KEH has one for $349.80
and it has the sterling reputation of KEH cameras to back it up. So
for less than half of Craigslist you get the same thing and a
money-back guarantee. Just a thought.

But the 7D while a fine camera is a bit
of a hill for our purposes. You want to stay away from pro-level or
even advanced consumer cameras. Why not go for the best? Because pros
and advanced amateurs beat the hell out of their cameras taking
thousands of frames a year and dragging them through all sorts of
conditions I wouldn't even drag myself through. Sure that perfect
image of a snowy owl is great except for the sitting in a freezing
blind for twelve hours waiting for the little plucker to show up. And
all of that cold and wet in addition to getting into your bones, gets
into your camera. Or what about the dunes? All those wild buggies
tearing through the sand with spinning tires and boiling exhausts
spewing out stuff which will seek out your camera and invade any
crack or cranny. No those pro cameras lead exciting lives but when
they are done they are done. Think taxi cabs, you wouldn't want your
daughter driving one to school in Roseburg, right?

So what you are looking for is that
nice entry level camera owned by a little ole lady who only took it
to church socials and teas. That puppy has a lot of life and you want
some of it.

And giant sensors with a bazillion
megapixels just take up space you need for all of those cat videos
you downloaded from YouTube.

So how much is enough?

You are in luck, I used to say twelve
megapixels but this year the sixteen and eighteen megapixel jobs are
cheap enough to consider. All of which makes the twelve megapixel
cameras a real steal!

Why just twelve? Because it is enough
to make beautiful 11x14 prints with no image degradation. Need even
more definition? Shoot in RAW and edit in post production. But that
is for the advanced class so I'll just say twelve will do the job and
if aunt Behapsabub keels over suddenly and names you heir to the vast
hair net fortune she has been hoarding all of these years treat
yourself to a sixteen megapixel baby.

Okay so now you know what you want and
why you want it what makes it so much better than the cigarette
package point and shoot or the camera in your phone? I already
mentioned all those big fat megapixels just waiting for you to use
them and the faster CMOS sensor instead of the CCD sensor in your
phone, and best of all you can change the lens!

Why in the world would you want to
change a lens and how would you do it even if you wanted to? First
changing lenses offers a whole range of new views. The McCollough
Bridge needs a wide angle lens if you want to get it all. Sure you
can do that with your phone but what will it look like when it is
blown up to 11x14? Maybe you want a perfect image of your daughter
before she goes off to school and dyes her hair blue and red and gets
a piercing through her nose and eyebrows and tongue and maybe I'll
just stop there, You want her to look like you dreamed of her, grown,
fresh and oh so beautiful, you can do that with an 85mm lens. And it
will stay that way even when she starts dating that thirty-five year
old grunge guitarist named Barf with the bleeding heart tattoo on his
forehead.

Oh yes, if you can operate a flush
toilet or a light switch you can change a lens.

So what does all of this mean? It means
you now have to decide, Pentax Kx, Canon Xsi or Nikon D90. (You could
also do a Sony A700 but you;d be losing out on a lot of accessory
choices)

How to chose? Isn't there a Match.com
for DSLRs? No but before you rake in all that Holiday cash I will
help you make a decision which will warm your heart, save your 401K
and fill your New Year with glorious images.

Friday, November 30, 2018

Yes, it is convenient, but you are
crippling your ability to make great images. Do you really want to
see tiny little pictures on that three inch screen? Or how bout
downloading them. You can do that right? You can't? So all the
fantastic images you take are stuck in that brick in your back
pocket.

Okay, I'll admit carrying around a DSLR
is like the Ancient Mariner with the albatross around his neck, but
Coleridge's boy couldn't make pictures with his bird. And why would
he , he had other more serious problems but you don't have an
albatross around your neck and you aren't stuck at sea for the next
three years so why don't you have a decent camera?

Yes, I do know that your pocket picture
machine has a forty megapixel sensor. All those teeninesy little
pixels jammed up together trying hard to be individuals. And they do
a pretty good job. Like when the Jordan Cove Export Terminal blows
sky high and you want to get a picture before the blast wave pounds
you and your phone into jelly or when tsunami from the earthquake
caused by all the fracking sends a forty foot wall of water rushing
across the bay or when the cat does something so cute you have to
take a picture even though there are a hundred and fifty million cat
pictures on the Internet already, (See I wasn't all gloom and doom),
so far on the spot snapshots the brick in your back pocket will do
just fine.

But what do you do when the shot you
want isn't six feet away or the light is fading fast or the critter
is moving at the speed of light, (Which all critters seem to do when
you want to take a picture), or the whale which has just broken the
surface isn't right beside your boat or he sun set is breath-taking
in an array of colors so brilliant that it couldn't be reproduced by
any artist?

That's when you need a real camera.

You see the phone is really a device
designed to carry voice messages, in spite of the fact that they have
become the Swiss Army Knife of modern culture, they connect, they
Facebook, they fax, they chat, they Instagram, they walk, they talk,
they wiggle and squirm, the living, breathing cell phone! And for the
most part they do all of those things pretty well, but just pretty
well.

A once in a lifetime image is by
definition a once in a lifetime deal and do you really want to trust
your fate to something you sue to order pizza?

So for real work, you need a real
camera. Now in the olden days when the Ole Trawler started taking
pictures cameras were heavy, complex, cumbersome things which at film
like a Suburban drinks gas and were just ever so slightly smaller.
Now that bestest, neatest, most wonderfulness thing you can buy
weighs less than three pounds. And don't try to kid me, I've seen you
hauling fruit cakes weighing more than that to the post office to
send to smelly uncle Fogbound because you don't really know him but
if your mother found out that you hadn't sent anything in fifteen
years you be on garbage can duty for the rest of your life. So stop
whining about the size and weight and admit that what you are really
afraid of are all the bells and whistles.

And yes, there are an awful lot of
bells and whistles, that's what makes a real camera so useful. But
you don't have to use them all at once. Every camera even the baddest
Nikon “I am a pro photographer because I have a Nikon see my dust”,
has an Auto setting or better still a P setting which stands for
Program which gives you a lot more options than Auto but no more
heartaches.

And you get all those big fat pixels.

Yes, I have heard Canon has a fifty
megapixel camera. That's 5-0 of big fat real, useful sized pixels.
They just don't offer to buy a new computer with a two terabyte drive
to store all those fifty megapixel shots of the cat.

Sure more pixels better images, but
there's a point where better and reasonable meet. Even Canon still
offers a first line camera with a twelve megapixel sensor. Why do
they do that? Because boys and girls twelve megapixels is just about
perfect for us not pro photographers. And the good news is twelve
megapixel cameras are obsolete for the most part. Obsolete! Why would
I want an obsolete camera?

Because the photfiends and the pros
want the newest, latest, brightest thing to come down the pike and
they toss their old cameras out when there is mucho life left in
them. And that is very good news for the rest of us, cause the price
of a twelve megapixel camera is now so low it is shocking. You can
put your hands on a nifty, neat and cool Pentax K-r for $119 dollars!
That's one step up from my beloved Kx and still a great deal. A Canon
XSi can be had for $129 and the high priced spread Nikon for $159.
That's cheaper than most point and shoots and you get a better
machine for less money.

But the news gets even better because
the new cameras have dropped the bottom out of even the best cameras
and now you can get a sixteen megapixel camera for what a twelve
would cost you just a year ago. So a Canon 2Ti, or a Nikon 5100, or a
Pentax K30 are all below two hundred dollars. Just think sixteen fat
juicy megapixels and they are all yours.

So start thinking right now. What do
you need and what do you want? A twelve megapixel camera with save
you a coupla hundred bucks and do almost every job you can ask of it
and if you keep it for the next twenty years it is unlikely to break
or reveal all of it's secrets.

Or do you want to do poster sized
prints and the extra megapixels are a must. It will only cost you
about fifty bucks to move up but is it worth it?

Oh yes, I hear know-it-all brother
Cecile tch-tching. He is dying to tell you buying a used camera is
like throwing money down the drain. It will break in two weeks and
you'll be out money you could have spent backing his canned air
factory. After all he only needs another two or three million to get
it of the ground and then once the IPO comes you will get all of your
money back in quadruplicate!

Bad news for brother C, most DSLRs are
engineered to stand up to fifty thousand shutter activation's, that's
a lot of clicks and Nikons are said to be able to do a hundred
thousand although like the second sentence in Moby Dick nobody has
ever gone there. My own Kx came with forty-five thousand activations
and I have been using it for four years without a single hitch. That
includes a clumsy fall which pinned the camera between me and the
very hard deck. I am happy to say the Kx never missed a beat and
after three weeks of Aspercream and heating pad applications I
regained the ability to flag waiters with my right arm.

And you don't want to see the strained smiles, the forced grins, the false gratitude on the faces of your closest friends and relatives, well, okay so on your relatives it would be okay, but for the rest you do want them to still be speaking to you in the bold, bright New Year?

So save your self from socks and go to the Coos History Museum's 2nd Annual Artisan Sale this Saturday from 10am to 4pm and find something that your friends would really, actually like, like...

Catherine Walworth's beautifully conceived and executed pottery.

No, not the dish your Aunt Bethembla gave you six Christmases ago which you use for an ash tray when the people from your spouse's work who are really disgusting and nasty people and who smoke like a chimney and expect you to have an ash tray even though you have made it clear to everyone and their dog your house is a smoke free zone, a dish you'd be proud to have sitting on the coffee table you snatched from the Hospice Thrift shop and refinished with your very own two hands and now tell all your snotty relatives who only buy from Marc Jacobs that it is a Charles Eames original.

This is a fish you won't have to throw out in three days or wonder why you thought it was a good idea to fix dill encrusted salmon at home when it can be had in twenty humpty-hump places here in town and if you get it there instead of home the is no clean up and why did you think it was such a good idea in the first place? No silly not the beautiful dish but cooking fish.

Or instead of dumping your keys in the cracked bowl which you have to hide every time you invite guests or have kin stop by why not have a gracefully designed bowl like, ahemmmm...

Which after seeing how good it looks on the hall table you'll be too embarrassed to put keys or candy in it and cover up the cute bird so you get the old cracked bowl back out to put beside it because you still have to have a place to put your keys...

Just go to the Coos History Museum's 2nd Annual Artisan Sale and stop by Catherine Walworth's table and buy something you will like so much that you won't want to give it up at all and will wind up at Walmart on December 24th buying those old socks anyway.

Tomorrow at the Coos History Museum, you have a chance to shop local, shop small, see the important, historical, local, stupendous stuff and goodies, (Technical insider-name for artifacts and gifts) all for free, FREE, and still be home in time for dinner!

You know there is nothing on television except another football game and how many football games can you watch before you grow roots into the couch and become a complete, mindless slug and waste all of the gifts you have been given watching the same endless run and catch and punt that come every year at this time and the you will be just like The Thing on the Couch with a beer in one hand and the remote control in the other and fuzzy slippers and a newspaper and open mouth sleeping and that's just too horrible to contemplate. so...

Come to the Coos History Museum and have your mind expanded, your senses stimulated and see all of the unique gifts not available anywhere else and all without guilt of sin and how can you beat that?

Thursday, November 29, 2018

And those are the good parts. It's less
than a month until Christmas and you still have six months worth of
work to do. The kids are screaming about the things they want which
will cost more than Trump's wall, the relatives keep calling and
threatening to come and stay (forever), the school/church/PTA has a
bazaar/ cake sale/ spaghetti dinner which you have to provide enough
stuff to feed the sixth division of the Chinese army, the fridge just
made an odd sound and belched out an odor that there is no polite
description for and The Thing on the Couch hasn't moved since the
Wednesday before thanksgiving and the only sign of life is his death
grip on the remote control. Thank God the holidays only come once a
year!

So what is the Ole Trawler going to say
about all of this to lift your mood, lighten your load and bring
light into the darkness which has settled over the entire world like
fungus or Global Warming?

You are lazy.

That's right, I'm talking about lazy
creative people who use the season to avoid working on their art.

I you are an artist you have to work at
your art all of the time. There is no time out, pause button or
reset, you have to keep going in spite of all of the things which get
in the way and the holiday season is sure to bring on that dreaded
curse of all creative people, Writers Block.

You know all about Writer's Block, or
if you don't I'm gonna tell you cause it is a pet peeve of mine and I
whine about it every chance I get cause there is nothing that burns
me more than to hear some writer moaning about being blocked when the
truth is they are just too lazy to get up off the couch and start
working.

Let's be clear, if this were any other
profession you laugh at the notion of being blocked. You wouldn't put
up with a plumber who has Plumber's Block. Bad tooth and need a
Dentist? Sorry I have Dentist's Block you just have to wait for me to
get the right inspiration to work on that bad tooth. You understand I
am a creative person and can't just produce on demand like a trained
seal.

Horse radish! Let's step back to the
glorious days of radio. You remember, like television or the Internet
without pictures. Why go so far back? Because it is one of the best
examples of why creative people can't be blocked.

In the days of radio, the shows went on
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The demand for scripts
was ravenous, rapacious, voracious and there was no alternative. The
show was going on the air at the scheduled time with or without a
script. So the writers were in a constant cold sweat working to beat
the clock.

And guess what? They did it.

That's right, those creative people
came up with scripts on demand. There just wasn't any time for
Writer's Block.

And the strange thing is this applies
to all areas of creative effort, if you have to do it, you can.

The notion that you have to wait for
inspiration is like waiting for a politician to do the right thing.
It might happen but more often than not they just feather their own
nest.

So when the ideas just won't come what
do you do?

Do something. Albert Einstein said,
“Life is like riding a bicycle, in order to keep your balance you
have to keep moving.” So is inspiration, to get it, you have to get
going.

I write so I know all about Writer's
Block, usually that means I am just too lazy to sit down and write.
When it isn't laziness, it is because I am bored with what I am
writing. Fix Writer's Block, switch what you are writing. I try to
keep at least three stories going at once.

Sure that takes a bit of concentration
but I have a trick memory so I can always remember just where I left
off and can pick it up right away.

But what do you do when you aren't Rain
Man.

Take notes, use a tape recorder, join a
writer's group, have a coffee klatch with other writers and above all
do something.

A

And every other artistic discipline is
the same, stuck, keep going.

When I can't work on a photographic
project I want to work on, I work on what is available. I'm trying to
locate veterans and get their pictures for a project I want to do in
the new year. But guess what they have lives and opinions and they
don't always want to help me with my little project and why should
they. They've already given their pound of flesh whether is was
overseas or at home and they should get to do whatever they damn well
want. So when there are no veterans to shoot I shoot what I can find.

My cats are always willing to pose.
They think the camera is fascinating and they are little drama queens
so they love preforming for me. And that is a good thing cause I
would do nothing if I could.

The holidays are a great time for doing
creative projects. There are lights and ornaments and packages and
people, festive decorations and food, food and lots of food.

So when the inspiration needle hits
empty look around. There's a whole world of interesting things to
fire your creative rockets. Don't be that guy, the guy with Roofer's
Block.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

So It Goes Coffeehouse will host a release of Nothus Rex's new poetry book with a reading from the author. Copies available at So It Goes Coffeehouse. Champagne, free admission. Friday Dec 7th at 7pm. 190 Central Avenue, Coos Bay, OR 97420

This Saturday evening, December 1, the South Coast Folk Society
will host a public Contra Dance in CoosBay. All are welcome to this special
event which features live music by the popular Cultural Ecology Band, and dance
calling by guest caller Silas Minyard of Portland. The Contra Dance will be held at
the CoosBaySeniorCenterDance Hall, located at 4th and
Ingersoll, from 7-10PM. Contra dancing is a light-hearted form of social dancing
that is easy to learn and fun for all ages. Singles, couples and families
can all enjoy this exciting new form of dance. New dancers are always
welcome. No experience or partner is necessary. Wear comfortable clothing
as contra dancing is quite aerobic and great exercise.

The Folk Society welcomes back the talented Cultural Ecology Band
to play music for Saturday’s Contra Dance. Cultural Ecology is a
six-member folk dance band based on Oregon's south coast. With Sharon Rogers on
accordion and vocals, Stacy Rose on hammered dulcimer, flute, and pennywhistle,
Gail Elber on bazouki and mandolin, Alayne Olmsted on fiddle, Tom Purvis on
flute, and Marty Giles on percussion, Cultural Ecology employs a variety of textures
and arrangements. The band incorporates their experience with international
folk music into the lively genre of American contra dance music, to create a
unique and beautiful dance experience.

The Folk Society has arranged for a skilled guest caller from Portland, Silas Minyard, to guide dancers
throughout the evening. He will teach all the steps and patterns you need
to know. Silas is a very personable caller with an exciting
repertoire of dances. His dances are appropriate for all ages and skill
levels. He will give a lesson at 7PM, and first timers who show up for
this lesson will receive a ticket for free admission to their next dance.
Wear your dancing shoes, casual clothes, and a big smile.

This event is
alcohol and fragrance free. Refreshments are available. Doors open
at 6:45PM. Admission: General=$7; Seniors 60+=$6; Members=$5;
Students are always free, and Supervised Children under 6 are also free. For
more information call 541-404-8267 or visit www.southcoastfolksociety.com.